Sunday, 27 April 2008

On July 10th 2005 Alice was being looked after by my lovely midwife friend, and DH and I were scrubbing our house out, on our knees. It was a hot day and I kept coming over all 'funny'. Made myself drink more and cracked on.

A week or so after we moved I felt the usual rumblings of AF on her way...day after day...every morning I woke up with enough AF pain to be absolutely convinced she would be there...nothing.

After a week of this, during a quick visit to the supermarket I tossed a First Response (am becoming an advert for them!) in the trolley, saying to DH 'this will start it, it always has done' At home DH unpacked the shopping and went and watched TV, whilst I nipped to the loo, did the stick wee and stuck the test on the side. I then glanced back and saw the biggest, thickest, almost BLACK second line. O M G. I AM PREGNANT. GULP. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN. I minced down to DH with the immortal words 'I know why I haven't got my period...and held out exhibit A'. Alice, our 7m gurgled happily on her mat, unaware of the enormity of what was happening, and unaware she was on her way to being a big sister - BIG? who were we kidding??!! She was tiny! not even crawling!

My lovely GP at the time (sadly missed, Dr Dave, sadly missed) bunged me on steroids straight away to combat any potential immune stuff which was part of our original problems previously, and also set up weekly BPs/wee tests to spot any pre eclampsia hints early on. We had a swift early scan at 5+5 which showed a little sac and yolk sac. At 8w I had a sudden urge to test again. It was negative. The world stood still, until that point we didn't know how we felt, to be truthful, but suddenly we had stepped back in time and it looked like we were travelling down an old road again. But a scan 2 days later showed a healthy little blob with a cracking heartbeat and we were back in the game.

Florence's was from that point a fairly uneventful pregnancy. Apart from feeling a little foolish waddling into the ante-natal clinic with a baby in a pushchair, and seeing the 'looks' (no, honestly - we really DIDN'Texpect this to happen!) it was a breeze. I had lots of scans as Alice had been so small they wanted to be completely sure things weren't going awry in there. The only complication Florence gave us was her determination to ignore the fact that she needed to move into some sort of birth position. She was lying right across me with the cord bundled below her 'tranverse unstable lie'. We live quite far from the hospital (30-40 mins) and the consultant said that was too long to chance me going into labour, it had to be planned c-section, and I had to be in hossy from 36w. I had had some periody pains, from about 30w, but of course, not having sniffed labour with Alice I had nothing to go by. When I did get taken in to sit it out until 38w they saw I was actually having regular contrax on the monitor. Within a day or so of lying around like Lady Muck in hospital it had all stopped, so probably overdoing it with work/Alice.

A not particularly pleasant c-section and my Flower was with us. She seemed huge, huuuuge compared to Alice, but absolutely perfect. We had a few problems in the first few days with her blood sugar and temp, but some TLC and things got sorted.

Florence is such a huge character. You cannot ignore that fact she's around. She's very, very active and is very inquisitive - nothing is safe from her roving eyes and hands. She, like her big sis has a healthy sense of humour and is constantly chuckling to herself. We did have an awful time as she went over the year point, without getting mobile in any sense - taking our concerns to the medics confirmed there may well be something amiss, and for 3 months DH and I were devestated there might be something seriously wrong with our littlest girl. Thank heavens, she caught up, all of a sudden. Florence is now, not only my opinion but daycare's too, very ahead for her age, and her vocabulary is huge, 10-word complex sentences and games almost as involved as Alice's being the norm. Florence adores her 'mo-mo' (scraggy monkey toy), Tigger and Scooby-Doo. She also loves The Little Mermaid and does the 'singing' bit with much gusto. She's recently hit the age where they start knowing fear, and we now regularly have conversations around 'I'm a bit scared of elephants, Mummy' (word for word!) She loves playing house, and climbing - the latter to our dismay most of the time, she can be a big worry. She has the most delicious feet, and luckily for me she loves having them held/stroked because I am addicted to them! She's very, very cuddly, and my favourite time with her is when it's her and me after her bath, kissing, playing and stroking her dry into her jim-jams.

Florence, you are the daughter I TRULY never dared even get as far as dreaming about. I am so thankful for you, and how you came along - my cautious nature would have probably stopped me even thinking about trying for #2, assuming we'd had all our share of luck with Alice, but you snuck in there and I am so pleased you did. I call you my little bright sunshine face, that's what you are. I love you my little sweet darling.